“We hated to spend any time in this space,” Sharon Exley says about her and her husband Peter’s kitchen. Sharon and Peter’s Chicago apartment was built in 1893, and the kitchen alone had water damage, “five doors and three windows, little wall space, and a healthy floor slant,” Sharon explains.

When Rosaline Elbay was apartment hunting in New York, the fireplace, brick walls, and large windows in the living room of this Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, apartment won her over. And she painted the non-brick walls Farrow & Ball’s “Calke Green” after moving in. “Coupled with the greenery outside … it can really feel like you aren’t in New York at all when you’re sitting there with the window open,” she says.

For many people, long-backlogged projects take on a new urgency as they find themselves spending more time at home and using their spaces in different ways. For Melissa and Wyatt Shipman (Loving Here), that project was the half-bathroom in their basement.It was a relic of the early 1990s when their home was built, and it looked it: dingy tan vinyl floors, an oak vanity, poor lighting, and a dusty blue (yes, blue) toilet and sink.